It seems crystal clear to me that the Gerrman Constitutional Court has thrown a lifeline to all those Europeans who do not want the Lisbon Treaty foisted on them. But that lifeline is of no use unless you grab it and pull on it with all might and main.
In this respect Dan Hannan points out the way to go [end story here] . Cameron praised Hannan’s blockbuster speech in the EU Parliament criticising Gordon Brown to his face. Let’s hope he’s still listening with his “will not let it rest there’ thinking-cap on.
Christina
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TELEGRAPH 1.7.09
German court delays Lisbon Treaty
Germany's highest court set a new obstacle for the Lisbon Treaty when it ordered parliament to pass a new law before the controversial document can be ratified.
By Martin Banks in Brussels
In a ruling that could delay the ratification of the treaty for months, judges said it was broadly compatible with German law but they refused to grant it approval for immediate ratification.
They said a new law was required to guarantee the rights of the German parliament in the European Union's decision-making process because MPs had "not been accorded sufficient rights of participation in European lawmaking procedures and treaty amendment procedures".
The ruling presented Sweden, which takes over the rotating EU presidency on Wednesday, with a fresh challenge. Its government must already oversee a second referendum on the treaty expected in Ireland in the autumn, while the presidents of the Czech Republic and Poland have yet to sign off on ratification.
The latest ruling means the ratification process in Germany is on hold and may buy more time for opponents of the treaty, potentially undermining efforts to have it introduced by Jan 1 next year.
The presiding judge in the federal constitutional court, Andreas Vosskuhle, said: "The basic law (German law) says Yes to the Treaty but demands at national level a strengthening of the parliament's involvement."
The judgment echoes a fierce debate in Britain between those who describe proposed EU constitutional change as a "tidying up exercise" and the treaty's opponents who see the text as part of a federalist agenda that threatens national sovereignty.
The case was brought by 50 German MPs who argued that approval of the treaty would erode democracy and breach German law.
The German parliament is expected to vote on the legislation demanded by the court, including a guarantee that its parliament will have to vote on any changes to the treaty or any expansion of EU competences, before the country's general election on Sept 27.
Lorraine Mullally, Director of Open Europe, a UK-based think tank, said: "If one wanted to summarise this result, one could say: the constitutional court says 'yes' to the treaty but demands that parliament's right to participation be strengthened at the national level."
"Nobody realistically expected the court to rule against Lisbon, but it is hugely significant that judges have delayed ratification until the German Parliament is given greater powers to influence EU law-making.
"The judges have ruled that the transfer of powers to the EU level leaves a gap between citizens and the EU. It is interesting that changes are deemed necessary - but of course it's still a green light for the Treaty."
An Open Europe poll found that 77 per cent of Germans want a referendum on the treaty.
Currently, 23 of the 27 member states have ratified the treaty, which would give the EU a full-time president and foreign minister and create a diplomatic service. [AND remove most vetoes -cs]
Although the European Commission president, Jose Manuel Barroso, said he was "confident" the ruling would "clear the way for a swift conclusion" for German ratification of the treaty, it could delay the process in Germany for months.
Nigel Farage, leader of the UK Independence Party, said: "This court ruling gives the green light to the political class in Germany to continue with the treaty. I am not in the least bit surprised as the whole thing has always been about how the Irish will vote. The judgment will not be greeted with joy in Germany. Just as in every other country, bar one, its people have not been given the chance to express an opinion on the treaty.
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SPIEGEL Online International 1.7.09
TOO EARLY FOR TRIUMPH IN BRUSSELS
What Lisbon Ruling Really Means for the EU
By Hans-Jürgen Schlamp in Brussels
The political elite in Brussels are breathing a sigh of relief. The fact that Germany's highest court has set very strict conditions on the ratification of the Lisbon Treaty doesn't seem to be bothering anyone: The main thing is that the treaty doesn't have to be reworked again.
It didn't take anytime at all for the windbags in Brussels to start furiously sending out celebratory messages after Germany's highest court in Karlsruhe ruled on Tuesday that the Lisbon Treaty to reform the European Union doesn't directly violate the country's constitution.
"I welcome the decision of the German Federal Constitutional Court," Jose Manuel Barroso, the president of the European Commission, the EU's executive branch, immediately announced, probably before he had had a chance to read through the 147-page ruling -- or even the 10-page press release.
The European Parliament in Strasbourg, France: Eurocrats are breathing a sigh of relief over the German Constitutional Court's ruling on the Lisbon Treaty.
That's because Barroso is currently in Greece, near Athens, as a guest at a working conference of German members of the European Parliament for the conservative Christian Democrats. They're currently working on more important things -- namely a plan to secure Barroso's re-election as the Commission's president. And one can't really say that the Karlsruhe judges recognized the Lisbon Treaty because of its "strengthening of the democratic legitimacy of the European Union," as Barroso sought to spin it.
German Checks and Balances for EU Laws
In fact, the exact opposite is true. The guardians of the German constitution are concerned about the EU's "democratic deficit" -- shortcomings it also sees in the Lisbon Treaty. On page after page, the justices formulate strict legal limits, stating that any future "Community law or Union law" deemed to violate those principles can be "declared inapplicable in Germany." [There’s no reason at all that Britain should not make similar demands - if we wanted to -cs]
Somehow, though, the threatening verdict from Germany's highest court doesn't seem to be bothering anyone in Brussels.
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Hans-Gert Pöttering, [Not THAT anti-democrat, please! -cs] president of the European Parliament, "warmly welcomes" it. The Greens "welcome it." Even members of parliament for the far-left Left Party "welcomed" a "part of the ruling," even though their political bosses in Berlin were parties in the case seeking a blanket rejection of Lisbon at the Constitutional Court.
Klaus Hänsch, a longtime German Social Democrat in Brussels, described the development as a "good day for Germany." His colleague Alexander Lambsdorff, also a member of the European Parliament, warned his colleagues in Germany's Bundestag that the parliament must fulfil "its obligation" to make ratification of Lisbon possible by drafting domestic legislation demanded by the high court, so that the EU could be made "more democratic through the treaty."
Further Hurdles Remain
Swedish Foreign Minister Carl Bildt, whose country takes over the six-month rotating EU presidency on Wednesday, said that the time table for the coming half year would not be changed by the ruling. According to the current time plan, the Lisbon Treaty, which aims to make the union more transparent, is intended to go into force by the end of the year.
Jan Fischer, the prime minister of the Czech Republic, which just completed its EU presidency, also welcomed Wednesday's ruling. "I see today's decision as an important step towards the ratification of the Lisbon Treaty and towards institutional stability of the European Union," he said in a statement.
Still, it's difficult to pinpoint what is feeding all this Euro-euphoria. Many EU champions are just happy that the guardians of the German constitution didn't reject the Lisbon Treaty and that the worst-case scenario could be averted. Now, the complicated ratification process for this complicated treaty can continue.
But that alone is already going to be plenty of work. The next step in the process is an expected second referendum in Ireland in October that will see the Irish voting on Lisbon again after rejecting it last year. The euroskeptic presidents of Poland and the Czech Republic must also be cajoled into signing the treaty.
Still, the treaty -- forged out of what was originally planned as a European constitution that failed in referenda in France and the Netherlands -- has cleared one more hurdle. Everything that the Constitutional Court has rejected, criticized and noted, will initially have more impact on German domestic democratic institutions than European. That's why the pro-Lisbon faction is celebrating. At the same time, its opponents don't want to be seen as the losing party -- that wouldn't come across well with their supporters. So everybody's happy -- at least judging by outward appearances.
Even the Europe grumps in Bavaria with the Christian Social Union, the sister party to Chancellor Angela Merkel's conservative Christian Democratic Union, who sued to stop Lisbon, are pleased with the Karlsruhe decision. But their pleasure is more schadenfreude than true joy. Markus Ferber, the leader of the CSU's party group in the European Parliament in Brussels, is less pleased about the development -- he would have preferred to see Lisbon fail the German legal review. But he's still happy that the court is forcing the German parliament to change the domestic laws pertaining to the ratification of the treaty and require greater participation from Germany's legislative bodies in the European decision-making process. Now, he says, there will finally "be more parliamentary control before governments make decisions in Brussels."
He says he has often told his colleagues in the German parliament that they give their chancellor and their ministers "too much freedom" in handing over competencies to Brussels and in passing new laws. In the future it won't be as easy as it often has been up until now for representatives of the 27 EU member states in Brussels to fiddle around and push through important decisions on a wide range of topics including personal or social security, cultural and legal questions or even military deployments involving German soldiers.
Before such decisions can be made, Germany's two legislative bodies, the Bundestag and the upper house of parliament, the Bundesrat, will have to give their approval. That might make the EU's work a little bit more cumbersome, but it will also be more democratic.
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DAN HANNAN’S Blog (Telegraph) 1.7.09
Lisbon Treaty: Britain should not settle for less than Germany
By Daniel Hannan
It was never likely that Germany’s Federal Constitutional Court would throw out the Lisbon Treaty. Judges, after all, are human beings. We could hardly ask them to shoulder the responsibility of defying every party in the Bundestag.
But Germany’s supreme court has done the next best thing. It has noted that the EU is insufficiently democratic, and has demanded modifications to domestic German law as a condition for ratification. Needless to say, the Bundestag will scurry to push these statutes through before the summer recess to keep implementation on track: the palaces and chancelleries of Europe are terrified by the prospect of a delay in ratification until after the election of a Conservative Government in Britain
This, though, shouldn’t be the end of the story. If the European Constitution Lisbon Treaty is insufficiently democratic for Germany, why is it good enough for everyone else? Shouldn’t the other 26 member states demand the same statutory safeguards that the Bundestag will now adopt? I don’t easily see how Gordon Brown or Nicolas Sarkozy or Brian Cowen could get away with refusing. Aren’t the rest of as deserving of democracy as the Germans?
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Daniel Hannan
Daniel Hannan is a writer and journalist, and has been Conservative MEP for South East England since 1999. He has written eight books on European policy, speaks French and Spanish and is author of ‘The Plan: Tw
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